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If one does not blog,

Is one still a blogger?

It’s been, yikes, four months since there has been any activity on this blog. I haven’t been reading. I got Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter for the October Owl Crate box and I was trying to read it but just couldn’t focus enough. I think it’s still sitting on a shelf, book mark half way through. I’ve gotten a couple of books since then that I haven’t even opened. Some of them look really interesting but it doesn’t seem to help.

This happens sometimes. You might call it depression or ADHD or whatever you like. But I go through periods where my brain just does not want to function correctly. Other times I read a book in a couple of days and it’s no problem. Then there are the times where it’s a struggle to even watch TV because I can’t focus or have any desire to pay attention or care at all that I’m missing something that I might at other times really enjoy. I can almost never finish TV show seasons because of this. I just can’t stick with it. Movies are a little better. Shorter timeframe, really. But a Netflix movie could languish in my possession for a couple months or more before I can dredge up the desire to watch it. Even then I might pause it and wander off a couple of times to do the dishes or tidy up or annoy the cat.

Then there are the things I obsess over. Like fandom. I read fanfiction. Adore it, really. Once I have an interest in a fandom, that’s it. It rules to the exclusion of all else. A little over a year ago I loved the Avengers Steve/Tony ship. My love for the Avengers was total, all encompassing. I devoured fanfic and fanart for Avengers like my life depended on it. I could read fanfic all day and all night long. It was hard to stop but I had no trouble focusing.

Then I saw the new Man from Uncle movie, which lead to discovering the Man from Uncle TV show from the 60’s and the lovely, beautiful ship of Illya/Napoleon. I was hooked. Now I devour fanfic and fanart for the Man from Uncle fandom. Which really sucks because it’s a substantially smaller fandom than Avengers was. I’ve already gone through the Archive of Our Own fanfics and now I’m desperately looking for more to read.

But now I have no interest for Avengers. Just Man from Uncle. My brain is fucked up.

I can read and read and read fanfic but I can’t do the same for original books. I don’t understand why, either.

I also try to write in my chosen fandom but that’s another thing I can’t focus on. I obsess over Man from Uncle but it’s a struggle to focus and complete fanfic ideas. I have a lot of started ideas but very rarely complete anything to post. You would think my ability to obsess over a fandom would carry over to writing fanfic for it but my motivation kind of trickles away.

I have two Avenger fanfics that I started posting and now I fear I’ll never finish them because my interest has moved on. I’ve sworn to never post anything that wasn’t already done because of this. Those two fanfics will probably languish forever.

Does anybody else experience this? Can you just obsess over something, absolutely adore it, but not be able to focus on other things? Or lose interest and motivation on projects? It’s not like I don’t have time to read books or write. I have loads of time. Just no follow through on projects. Is it ADHD? Depression? Hormonal? Anybody have any advice?

I both read and write fanfiction. (Fanficiton is a fan created story based on a TV show, movie, or book.) When I was a teenager (oh god, I’m old! When the hell did I get old!), fanfiction was pretty much all I read. I lost entire summers to the internet and fanfiction. I really get into a fandom and exhausted all resources until something else catches my eye. (Ooh shiny!) This has included through the years: several anime series, several 90’s cartoon shows, the Highlander TV show, everything Star Trek, the Lord of the Rings books, the Lord of the Rings movies, the Merlin BBC show, the Sherlock BBC show, the Sherlock Holmes books, any movie Robert Downey Jr. has ever been in including Ironman and the Sherlock Holmes movies, any movie James Mcavoy has ever been in but mostly X-Men First Class, the Grimm TV show, and probably more that I’ve just read but haven’t written anything in. Those listed above are fandoms I’ve both read and written for. Like I said, entire summers were lost to the internet back then. (We had dial-up back then too. You can imagine the arguments about me tying up the phone line 24 hours a day. Evil parents, trying to get me to go outside and play!)

I think the first fanfiction I ever read or wrote was for Sailor Moon. God, there’s a flashback. It was the late 90’s and Sailor Moon was the first taste of anime (Japanese cartoons) I had ever gotten. I was hooked. I spent a stupid amount of money buying DVD’s in the early 2000’s before Netflix caught on and I could get the shows through a rented disk. I still watch a huge amount of anime but it’s less all-consuming now than it was back then. Almost everyone I know has at least read fanfiction from Star Trek. Kirk and Spock are like, the original pairing and Star Trek was really the first show where fanfiction appeared in mass on the internet. Now, sites like livejournal and fanfiction.net allow for easy access and posting. Anyone with half a brain cell has posted some sort of fanfiction these days.

Why read fanfiction, you ask? Yes, some of it is completely stupid and shifting through the crap to find a good story can be exhausting but fanfiction is just the extension of the original source material. It’s a way to continue to immerse ourselves in the TV show, movie, or book after it’s done. It’s a way to get your own ideas out there and let your imagination run wild. In many ways, people find writing fanfiction easier because the characters are already there. Others find it harder because you are trying to match your writing to a character that already exists, trying to get the character’s ‘voice’ right. I mostly read and write fanfiction because it allows me to play out scenarios that would never have happened in the original source material, like a certain relationship or being able to focus on what was a secondary character. Fanfiction is like toys everyone can play with.